Thomas Heckman
Analyst · new information, future events or otherwise. A wide variety of factors could cause or contribute to such differences and could adversely impact revenues, profitability, cash flows and capital needs. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements contained in this document will, in fact, transpire or prove to be accurate. I will now turn the call over to Stan Ross to begin
Thank you, Stan, and welcome, everyone. I appreciate you joining us this morning. I do refer you to the 10-Q, the Form 10-Q, that we filed with the SEC earlier this morning, it's a more complete rundown of the quarterly events and activities and financial conditions. So please refer to that for a larger discussion of operations on that. What I'm going to look at is more of the significant developments and some of the trends that we are seeing in our financials. I know it's hard to say and believe that we saw improvement in a quarter that we had a $2 million operating loss. But let me discuss a little further and get into the numbers and the trends and what we're seeing and what we're optimistic about. First of all, we did have a revenue shortfall. We were $400,000 less than the fourth quarter 2017 and $2.7 million less than the first quarter of 2017, the year-ago quarter. But the thing that we need to keep in mind is we ended the quarter at $705,000 in order backlog that could have been shipped had we had the product. There was a supply chain issue, principally from our Asian suppliers, our Pacific Rim suppliers, that stopped product flow towards the end of the quarter and made it difficult to do that. We've largely had that rectified now, and we do believe that we'll get caught up and be at or near zero backlog at the end of the second quarter. So that was a temporary event caused by a supply chain glitch, primarily some cable manufacturers weren't able to supply components timely. So in any event, you had that $700,000 of backlog to our revenues for the current quarter, it paints a far different picture than the $2.5 million total revenue that we're currently showing. Also, bear in mind that a year ago, in the first quarter of 2017, we had just begun the AMR contract and then it yielded about $600,000 or $700,000 of contract revenue, both service and installation and product revenue in Q1 2017 that did not recur in 2018 first quarter because of the hold put on the contract by AMR. I'll talk about that a little bit later here, but we see some good signs that, that contract may be moving towards being reinstated shortly, but in any event, had we shipped all our backlog at the end of the first quarter, our Q1 2018 revenues would have been the best quarter we've had since the second quarter 2017, almost a year ago. So it really provides a better view of the trend in revenues, especially because a lot of the revenues are being generated by service, which are at higher margin and more predictable and recurring in nature. So we're pleased with that trend. Again, the AMR contract, let me give you some further detail on that. We started doing an upgrade and update process, including installing ATU units, asset tracking units, back in the third quarter of 2017, roughly 1,600, 1,650 units that we agreed to go in and update, upgrade and install the ATU units. And by the way, we would, therefore, have recurring service revenue from the ATUs. We've got all but about 150 units upgraded at this point. It's been a very successful process. We've upgraded, updated all the units and the issues that were being experienced are not recurring, or certainly not recurring to the status that it had before. So I think both sides are very happy with the results of the upgrade process. With that, we believe we're currently looking at and quoting expansion of the contract to several large cities in the U.S. here in the second quarter. Don't know that we'll get those pulled in and installed and booked in Q2, but I think we'll have something to talk about, certainly during the next quarter's conference call about starting with a couple of large cities being installed in the AMR contract. We really do expect that AMR will begin to return to a normal purchase pattern in the second half of 2018, and that would be well received by the company. We're excited to get that thing back on point of where we started. And it's unfortunate the events had happened, but we believe it'll be back to a more normal purchase pattern in the second half of 2018. We'd spoke a little bit earlier about service revenues. And service revenues, I think, the last quarter, we spoke about that we already had booked over $1 million in service revenues for 2018, recurring service revenues. I call it mailbox money. Every month we get a check or every quarter we got a check for the service that we provide. With that, we did have a very significant contract award that we announced yesterday from a company called zTrip, and I will go into that in more detail later on. But with the addition of that zTrip contract, obviously, service revenues are going to improve substantially throughout 2018 and into the future, it's a 36-month contract. So the trends in revenue are very positive. I can't underscore that enough that we're moving to more of a service revenue model and, hopefully, the AMR contract gets back to a more normal pattern, and we're able to ship product and not leave it in backlog. So I'm very hopeful that the second quarter will be very much more optimistic than the first quarter in terms of gross dollars and revenue. Secondly, let's look at gross margins. Gross margins, we hit 45%, which represents our best gross margin since the third quarter of 2016. So that's been quite a while ago. So we've worked through our product issues, our QC issues. We believe that our QC program is working, and it's showing in our gross margins. And we expect the margin improvements to continue. Particularly in light of the service revenues becoming a larger part of our overall revenue. Service revenues have very little cost -- direct costs associated with them, it's primarily a fixed cost that you build these programs and cloud-based initiatives with R&D dollars in the past, and then you recoup them, obviously, through service revenues. So as service revenues grow as a percent of our overall revenues, we believe our gross margins will also improve significantly. We've always said that our goal is a 60% overall gross margin long term, that remains our goal and I think we're taking steps in that direction. And with the first quarter coming in at 45%, the best since 2016, I think we're demonstrating the trend has changed and moved in the right direction. Let's look at overall SG&A expense. That's a very nice trend that we're noting there. As you recall, we instituted a staff reduction and SG&A cost control program late in 2017 that really got implemented into totality in late January 2018. So we're seeing the effects of that. If you look at the gross dollars in SG&A expense, we were $800,000 less in gross dollars -- gross SG&A expense in Q1 versus the previous quarter Q4 2017, $800,000 less. And if you look at Q1 of 2017, we were well over $1 million less in total SG&A expense. So obviously, it's a very good trend. The gross SG&A expense dollars were the lowest since the second quarter 2014. So you got to go back quite a ways, almost four years to see dollar -- SG&A expense dollars that low. So we're proud of what we're doing there. Now recall that we implemented it towards the end of January or the biggest piece of it towards the end of January, so we didn't get a full effect during the whole quarter in the Q1 2018 numbers. We do expect the full implementation or the full effect of those cost-reduction measures certainly in 2000 -- I'm sorry, second quarter 2018 and beyond. So we expect better things in the future from our SG&A expenses. Obviously, that was a huge expense, and we believe it'll be a major part of our turnaround here. Let's move to some of the other areas, the significant developments. First of all, let's talk about the NASCAR affiliations that we announced, I think, in late 2017 or early 2018. I must say that as an accountant, I was a little weary of entering into such an agreement, but I -- from a first-hand standpoint, I've seen the tremendous marketing success that, that platform has provided us. I can't speak high enough about the caliber of people and the introductions and the networking and the sponsorship that NASCAR has provided. And quite frankly, I think I said before, that a company our size typically does not have access to that kind of network, and we're very proud of being part of the NASCAR affiliation and support group, and we expect some very big things, revenue-wise, in the future from that partnership. We're talking about companies that everybody knows, everybody sees or everyday names in everybody's life in the United States, and we -- we're excited about trying to close some deals that we're talking about with those type of companies. It's very, very exciting for us. Okay, let's talk about zTrip. Hopefully, everyone's had a chance to look at the press release that we issued yesterday. We were awarded a significant contract by zTrip LLC -- or Inc., I think it is. It's a Kansas City based company. It's rather new. But for those -- they are in 19 cities right now, so some of you all might recognize the name, many probably don't. But it's a very important win for us and indicative of future strategy, especially in the commercial space. If you look at zTrip, it's a different slant on the rideshare platform. zTrips are at-base dispatch, very similar to the typical rideshare companies that everybody's familiar with. But the difference between zTrip and the other rideshares is that zTrip actually owns the cars, and they pay for the insurance. So they have the risk of both of the asset and the liability associated with driving people and drivers, and so on and so forth. So they are very intent on managing and monitoring the drivers and, for that matter, the passenger interaction that happens in their vehicles. And they plan to make that a central part of their marketing plan and their way to differentiate themselves from the other rideshare platforms. Everybody's heard, everybody seen in the news of events, of tragic events and unfortunate events that happen in some of these other rideshare platforms, and zTrip has put our system as a central focal point of their overall safety and strategy for both the drivers and passengers. So they believe this will be a big marketing tool for them, as well as an expense and liability management tool since they're paying the insurance and obviously they would pay any claims that resonate from that. So we're excited about being part of the zTrip future. Let me give you some numbers. Right now, they have 450 units in Kansas City, those are the ones that we announced yesterday were going to go through an upgrade process where we're going to hook them to the cloud-based FleetVU platform. Previously, they had them, but they were locally managed and not centrally managed to the cloud. They saw the tremendous value of the FleetVU platform and they're going to go ahead and update all 450 units in Kansas City to the FleetVU platform. Beyond that, currently, they have 5,000 units in 18 U.S. cities as we sit today. Their intent is to move our platform, our DVM-250 and FleetVU flatworm throughout their existing operations. And just to show you how they're growing, they're telling us that they expect to grow to 30 U.S. cities by the end of 2018 and more than 16 international cities by the end of 2018. So more -- well more than doubling in the number of locations by the end of the year. So they're expecting big things, we're behind them and very proud to be part of their explosive growth story. So that's a little bit about zTrip. We're starting those upgrades of the 450 units immediately, and hopefully, we'll move quickly on to the other locations, which would include both product revenue as well as service revenue throughout 2018. And by the way, it's a 36-month service contract involved in those. So it's a very, very nice win for us, one that we're very proud of. Let's talk about VIEVU. Many of you have probably seen the news that Axon/Taser bought VIEVU earlier this month. And it's really too early to tell what impact, if any, that will have on our supply contract with VIEVU. I assume, longer term, there will be some impact to that, maybe good, maybe bad, I just don't know. But we have no idea, not had discussions regarding what the motive or intent was of Axon to buy VIEVU, but we suspect and can guess that it had something to do with getting their hands on our technology. One way or another, they obviously need that given the commitments they have to their customers. So it's really too hard to tell what the impact that will have. We hope that it's positive for us, but we just don't know at this point, and we will keep you guys apprised of what's going on there. Let's talk about the private placement that we announced earlier this month as well. On April 3, we completed a $6.05 million convertible debt with attached -- or detached warrants private placement to several new institutional investors and several of the older institutional investors that have been part of our previous deals elected to participate in that plan. So we're very happy to have the new investors onboard and new institutional investors onboard, and we believe that, that tells us that we're doing the right things to keep this thing going in the right direction and back to profitability. We used the convertible debt proceeds to pay off some maturing debt, which was maturing at the end of the quarter. And just to give you a thumbnail on the terms, it's 8% with a 13-month maturity date. It's convertible at $2.50 per share, and the tax warrants have an exercise price of $3 per share. So it was a nice deal for us, I'm glad we got it done. And that, especially given the new institutional investors that are involved, we're very happy to get that done. Let me touch briefly on litigation. I know Stan will probably delve into it deeper, so I'll keep my comments brief on that. Professional fees during Q1 2018 were roughly 400k, $400,000, which is almost the same as a year-ago quarter. I think it was $428,000 in Q1 of 2017. So really not much change from last year to this year in terms of litigation cost and professional fees. However, we do expect that to continue and probably accelerate here throughout the rest of 2018. Bear in mind, the Axon litigation, the stay was lifted earlier in the quarter and we are now moving to trial, and so we're going to have some additional fees associated with that. The WatchGuard litigation is currently stayed until June, I can't recall the date, June 7, 8, 9, somewhere in there, when the IPR ruling will come down from the patent office regarding the '292 Patent. Once that's issued, one way or another, then we'll move very quickly to lift of that stay and probably move towards trial as well with WatchGuard. So in any event, by the end of June, or certainly by July, we should get WatchGuard litigation moving forward to conclusion. And that's, obviously, a good move for us. We want to get this thing done and have them answer for the patent infringement that's been out there for quite a while and affecting our revenue. So with that, I'll turn it over to Stan. I'm sure he'll have more much more to talk about the litigation and maybe even zTrip.